A few things

First off, tomorrow marks the beginning of National Infertility Awareness week.  The ultimate intent of infertility awareness week is to promote open discussion of infertility.  There are are so many people struggling through this process that keep the issue very private.  And while we have not chosen that route, I can only imagine how difficult it would be to deal with this without any external support.  Sadly, some people are ashamed of their infertility.  My acupuncturist that runs a peer group asked permission to give my name to another patient of hers; a girl who has committed to facing her infertility with only her husband, and she is too embarrassed to tell anyone else.  While I don't think that everyone necessarily needs to be widely open, it is so important to have a foundation of support beyond the people directly struggling.

So what can you do?  Ultimately just be sensitive and cognizant that fertility issues are so much more widespread than you'd expect.  When someone quietly notes that it has taken a long time to have a child, that is not the time to explain how you get pregnant when your husband just looks at you from across a room.  Infertility affects 1 in 8 people, so it is likely that you know someone, other than me, that hurts from the inability to naturally reproduce.  Also, realize that the different processes folks use to help (e.g. IUI and IVF) are done in a responsible manner 99% of the time.  Octomom and Kate+8 give the whole process such a bad name, and no reputable doctor would ever get their patient in these types of situations.  You may still be anti-IVF for other religious or moral reasons - and are absolutely welcome to that opinion - but just be sure that it is an educated opinion not based on out-of-control media.

Second, if you are here from ICLW, welcome!  For those tilting their head in confusion, ICLW is a monthly process to connect women (and men!) that blog online.  Generally about infertility, but also life in general.  I've never participated before, but it seemed appropriate given the week is meant to bring additional awareness to all people struggling.  The lowdown on us can be seen in our Infertility Timeline and About Us sections.

Which gets me to us!  Exciting times around here, as we found out that we have 5 embryos hanging out in petri dishes, ideally dividing and growing like good embies should.  We like to deal in thirds (first IVF: 2 embryos from 6 eggs, 2nd IVF:  3 embryos from 9 eggs, and this IVF:  5 embryos from 15 eggs).  I'm a little disappointed, but I got over it pretty quickly.  Our issue before was that several eggs were immature.  However, this time 14 out of our 15 eggs were mature; unfortunately our fertilization rate was pretty low.  I guess we can never win them all.

But ultimately, I never wanted more embryos than we "needed", so I'm thinking 5 is perfect!  Barring any unexpected issues, we should be able to transfer two on Tuesday AND freeze some as well.  We've generally had great growing rates, so let's not make that a change for this cycle.

Gah, the next couple weeks will be torture again.  While the two weeks from positive beta to ultrasound were horrendous last time (and obviously didn't come to a good conclusion), I'm certainly hoping I get to experience that again.